Welcome to Warhammer 40k

A Step Into The Dark

“In the grim dark future of the 41st Millennium…there is only war.”

This tag line has echoed across fandom’s and science fiction/ fantasy for almost 3 decades. As a universe it has always had and maintained one of the deepest collections of lore of any created. Easily on par if not surpassing the universe and stories of Star Wars, Star Trek, Halo, and beyond.

To try and understand its vast and seemingly unending lore is a monumental undertaking that I hope to give lore seekers, who want a solid perch on which to stand. Future articles cover in depth details on different aspects of the many races, ships, weapons, characters that make up the 40k Universe.

Picture if you will…

Our galaxy, the Milky Way. A place of untold wonders and amazing discoveries. Teeming with life of all kinds, mysteries waiting to be found. Beauty beyond imagination…

Replace the beauty of untold hills and caves with worlds covered in industrial spires and factories. Their only purpose: to create machines of war. The most brutal weapons ever imagined forged with the single purpose of waging the unending wars that have raged for over 10,000 years. But humanity has barely held itself together…

For some, science and research still seem to be the way. For others, new science and discovery are seen as heretical and dangerous. An affront to their gods. Dark powers rule the stars and massive fleets composed of ships colossal in size dominate the vacuum of space. Their weapons capable of turning planets into nothing more than floating lifeless husks.

The Demons of the ‘Warp’. A place of what could be described as hell itself scratches at the fabric of reality, begging for release. Servants of dark masters, the Gods of Chaos, who have existed since the earliest days of humanity. Creatures created by the raw emotions of life itself…sometimes these creatures breach into our worlds and when that comes to pass entire worlds become rotting twisted blood-soaked hell-scapes.

The hulking Ork’s are creatures of muscle and rage, who wage endless war on everyone in the universe, including themselves, simply for the sake of waging it. They cannot not do it…it is their driving force.

The Tyranids, equal in number to the Orks, but spawned of a single mind come as terrors from beyond our own galaxy. They are not here to wage war and take our lands…but simply to feed.

Two ancient races, one in the final death throes of its existence clinging to survival on shattered pieces of their former home worlds. The other, reawakening from a deathless slumber after thousands of years. These beings are driven by forces crafted by ancients gods and given only one goal…exterminate all life once more.

Battle lines stretch across continents, trenches and fortresses running from the north to south poles of almost every world. Billions of souls, both human and alien, clash in warfare unlike anything ever seen or experienced by today’s man. All the documented wars at our own point in history are microscopic in scale compared to the battles raging across millions of worlds. Machines the size of mountains battle equally massive biological monsters. Their weapons shake the very sky and their foot falls rupture the ground. Billions of human soldiers use their sheer numbers to overwhelm the seemingly endless hordes of threats that stalk the void…but even that is not enough.

Hope…there is little to none. To some it may lay in the prayers to a God Emperor, or a Dark god of Chaos. Others may seek it in the working of machines that themselves are trying to understand something that may not even be there. Some reap on others hope devouring life simply because they themselves are no longer of flesh and blood. Some don’t understand the concept of it at all and it may not as well exist at all…for as the saying goes: